


Mistakes Paid in Someone Else's Blood

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Series: Tybathi Hawke Drabbles [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Disabled Character, Disabled Hawke - Freeform, Gen, Nonbiary Hawke, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:59:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1824121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The Templar was crouched behind one of the stones, back near the wall. He straightened when he saw that he’d been found, tried to stick his chin out defiantly. “Maleficar,” he spat at Tyb, but his voice was tiny. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>Set during Dissent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistakes Paid in Someone Else's Blood

Tyb felt invincible. 

Her lungs were burning, dragging in the stagnant air of the tunnels in ragged gasps, but Tyb wasn’t worried about that. Tyb’s back and shoulders felt like they were full of broken glass, and her arm trembled uncontrollably when she lifted her staff, but none of that was important. 

The chamber was full of dead Templars, and Tyb had made more than her fair share of them and meant to make more before this fight was over, but at the moment that didn’t matter, either. Any sympathy Tyb might have had for these Templars had stopped mattering once she had understood what they meant to do to the mage girl. 

That might change later. Tyb couldn’t say for sure. 

Now though - none of this felt the way it had when she’d killed the Ferelden deserters, back during those first days in Kirkwall. There didn’t seem to be any common ground between what Tyb was experiencing now and the feelings provoked by fighting any of the dipshit thugs who periodically tried to jump her and her friends in the street. 

There was no dull sense of wishing none of this had happened, or that it had been able to play out without such terminal violence. Tyb did not feel compelled to critique her own actions. The smell of blood was strong in the air, and it made Tyb feel nauseous, but she was not sick at herself. There was, all in all, no sense of having made a mistake. 

Tyb thought all of this was good. Ever since the night in the Chantry, when Tyb and her new friends had failed in any meaningful sense to rescue Karl, Tyb had been waiting for another chance to take the battle to the Templars. She had spent a great deal of time preparing herself for this mentally, and had made a silent promise that she would not feel guilty about it. But she had been worried that things would be more difficult than this. 

A Templar came toward Tyb suddenly, his sword arching desperately for her face. He was covered head to toe in heavy armor, and the only part of him that Tyb could see were his eyes, which were visible through a slit in his helm and very green. 

She raised her staff and brought it down hard against the stone floor, and the ground beneath the Templar rose up and threw him backwards. He crashed against the wall and didn’t get up. 

Tyb looked around for someone else to kill, but the chamber seemed clear. It was only Tyb and her friends and the mage girl - Ella, Tyb thought she’d heard one of the Templars call her. She glanced quickly at Merrill and Fenris to see that they were okay. 

Justice was between Tyb and the girl. Ella was staring at him with large, fearful eyes, her hands held out in front of her in a warding off gesture. 

An echo played in Tyb’s mind as they watched the girl. You will never take another mage as you took him, the voice said, and despite all the horror attached to the memory of that night in the Chantry, the recollection made Tyb feel alright. Right now it made her feel proud, point of fact - like she was living out the vow that Justice had made that night, finally taking steps toward making it real. 

So she said to Ella, “No one will hurt you again.”

Justice hardly seemed to notice the girl. “They will die,” he said. “I will have every last Templar for these abuses.”

Yes, Tyb thought, her mind seizing on the possibilities of this idea; They could keep going, follow the tunnels back to the Circle, take on the entire Order, see to it that all of this ended tonight. In that moment, it seemed like an entirely workable plan. 

Tyb put a hand on Justice’s shoulder. “We’ll kill them all - I promise,” she said. 

As Tyb spoke, she checked to see if her own feelings matched the icy certainty of her voice; it didn’t - not completely - but it was close enough that Tyb thought she could make it work. 

Justice wheeled on her. “Everyone of them,” he insisted, as though Tyb had contradicted him. 

“Good,” Tyb said. He was staring and Tyb met his eyes but knew she couldn’t keep that up for long. It was hard to look at Justice - to have Justice looking at her. She was afraid that he would see right through her. Tyb could smell the burn of the Fade coming off him in waves, radiating blue heat that somehow left her shivering.

There was a sound on the ledge above them. Tyb turned her head toward it, grateful for an excuse to do so even if the noise potentially signaled danger. She could see very little of the ledge, but she slipped past Justice and began to climb the ramp leading up there, her staff held ready. 

She passed Alrik’s body along the way. That shitlord had gone down under Fenris’s maul almost anticlimactically. Tyb resented it - she’d have liked to have a chance to hurt him. Now she paused briefly to give him a good kick, but didn’t take their eyes off the ledge for more than a second. 

The Templar was crouched behind one of the stones, back near the wall. He straightened when he saw that he’d been found, tried to stick his chin out defiantly. “Maleficar,” he spat at Tyb, but his voice was tiny. 

There was a nasty gash in his forehead, and blood was dripping into his eyes, but he didn’t lift his hand to wipe it away. He was holding a dagger, Tyb noticed suddenly, and wondered how she hadn’t seen it sooner. 

“Don’t move. Drop the blade,” Tyb said. Her voice wasn’t that loud, either. The Templar could heard her - she could read that much in his face - but Tyb wondered if the others below had. 

There was something going on down there, she could hear voices. Justice was much louder than Tyb, but she couldn’t quite make out what he was staying. 

It was odd, Tyb realized while watching the Templar watching her, the way he might have been Ella’s brother. He wasn’t old. Shit, she thought, he isn’t that much older than me. He was blinking furiously. Trying to clear the blood from his eyes, Tyb thought at first. But a second thought intruded on that one, uninvited: he is trying not to cry. 

Everyone one of them, Tyb thought, infuriated at themself. Right. Sure. 

“Drop it,” they said again. 

The Templar dropped the dagger. Then he bolted for the doorway. 

Tyb hesitated, something inside them rebelling at the thought of firing at his unguarded back, and that was all the time he needed to disappear into the tunnel that would eventually lead him back to the Circle. 

“No guts,” Tyb muttered disgustedly, unsure if she was speaking of herself or the fleeing Templar. 

He would warn the other Templars that they were coming. He would ruin everything. 

Tyb stepped to the ledge’s edge, and called down “Hey, hurry up!” at the others. No one responded, and she couldn’t see much from up there - just the tops of a bunch of heads. The mage girl was hidden from sight completely. 

The others were still arguing, and now that Tyb wasn’t so focused on the Templar she could almost follow what was being said. 

“She didn’t mean it,” Tyb heard Merrill say as she hurried down the ramp. Merrill’s voice was desperate, Tyb could hear her tripping over her words as she struggled to find the right thing to say. “She’s only scared. I’m not - oh. Don’t -”

Tyb rounded the bend to join them, and Fenris cut in over Merrill. “Hawke,” he said, and Tyb thought there might have been a note of relief in his voice, as much as he tried to appear indifferent to this entire conflict. “He is completely out of control,” he said, gesturing sharply at Justice. 

Justice turned to Tyb. He was very close, so close that Tyb thought she could hear the blue flames that burned in his eyes crackling. “She named me a demon,” he told them, pointing his staff at Ella in an accusatory manner. There was bafflement in his voice, under the outrage that someone who say something so demonstratively false about him there was a confusion that bordered on hurt, and Tyb could sense how quickly those feelings might tumble into unchecked rage. 

Part of Tyb’s mind recognized all of this, understood that the situation had the potential to spiral out of control if things weren’t handled very carefully. But at the moment it was hard to care very much about Justice’s sense of aggrievement, which seemed petty. 

“Get over yourself,” Tyb told him dismissively. She was thinking about the Templar who had run away - what they would need to do about him. The idea of challenging the entirety of Kirkwall’s Order here and now had in the course of less than five minutes lost its appeal, but Tyb knew they couldn’t just go home. 

She’d let that damned Templar get a good long look at her face, which was both well-known throughout Kirkwall and difficult to forget. It was entirely likely that he’d seen the faces of her companions as well. What it boiled down to was that if that Templar was allowed to make it back to the Circle, they could all expect serious trouble. Most likely, Fenris would hang. It might not be that simple for Merrill and Anders. And it might not end there, either; Tyb had a lot of friends who could easily end up in a bad way if Tyb drew the wrong sort of attention to them. 

Tyb had seen the Templar scared and helpless, and that made things more difficult. Point of fact, it made the idea of going into those tunnels to chase him down make Tyb feel physically ill. But she had no intention of risking their friends for his sake. 

She looked down at Ella, reminding herself why they had fought the Templars in the first place. The girl was still badly frighten - troublingly, she seemed at least as frightened by Justice as she had been of Alrik - but Tyb through that was something that could be fixed, or at least brought under control. 

Justice was fuming and this was the hell of the thing, the thing that Tyb would never be able to forgive herself for; she saw the danger but she did not take it seriously. She understood - if only in one corner of her distracted mind - that she needed to stop, take a closer stock of the situation, find some way to pacify Justice. 

But she didn’t.

The knowledge didn't translate into the right set of actions. Instead, she turned away. “One of the Templars made it into the tunnels,” she said, speaking to anyone who cared to know. To her Tyb said disgustedly, “Let’s finish this now.” 

And then everything flew to pieces. It all happened so quickly. 

Justice was shouting something about having his vengeance and Tyb believed at first that his anger was directed at her and so was reaching for her staff as she turned back toward him, and Ella was screaming but then she wasn’t anymore, and Tyb was just in time to see Justice drive his staff into Ella and though Tyb had the idea that she had been dead before that. There was a terrible squelching noise, and Justice was gone and Anders was moaning over and over again, “Oh no, Maker, no, what did I do? Please, no, forgive me.” 

And Tyb thought, I will go to him now, but her feet seemed rooted to the stone floor. I’ll help - somehow I will, Tyb thought, but still she couldn’t move, and then Anders was gone, too, running blindly into the tunnels that lead back to Darktown. 

The chamber was still. Tyb thought Merrill was crying, but she was doing it very quietly. Tyb couldn’t look at her. They couldn’t look at Fenris, either, nor at Ella’s body. She stood like that for nearly a minute, dithering, trying to weigh the risks or make a plan and coming up empty. Ella’s screams had gotten tangled up with Bethany’s inside her head, and Tyb knew that nothing good would come from that line of thought but she couldn’t make it stop, and - 

And Fenris was the one who got them moving, heading toward the tunnel into which the Templar had fled. He understood the situation and he made the right choice, and Tyb didn’t hold any of that against him. They followed Fenris into the tunnels and Merrill came after, and they spent hours searching for the Templar but never found him.


End file.
